This Grilled Chicken Taco Salad With Avocado Dressing Is Perfect For Those Hot Summer Days

If you like tacos, you'll love this!

When taco night rolls around and it’s too hot to use the oven, this is the perfect recipe to turn to. This recipe from the Williams Sonoma blog points out that making a grilled chicken taco in salad form, complete with homemade avocado dressing, is just the kind of thing you need to get you through the summer season without skipping out on one of your favorite themed dinner nights.

The recipe for grilled chicken taco salad calls for chicken thighs that can be cooked outside on the grill (to really keep the indoor heat at a minimum) or cooked in a skillet on the stovetop. Corn, beans, plum tomatoes and crushed tortilla chips accompany the cooked chicken on a bed of crisp romaine lettuce.

Last, but certainly not least, the salad is topped with creamy avocado dressing that’s made using an avocado, garlic, buttermilk, sour cream and plenty of fresh cilantro.

In the end, you wind up with a delicious summer salad that’s best when paired with an ice-cold margarita:

Of course, you can customize this salad as easily as you would an actual taco. So, add fresh jalapeno slices, a drizzle of hot sauce, extra cheese or whatever you see fit to make sure this salad is just how you like it.

If you happen to be serving salad to a crowd, a taco salad can be transformed into a dish that’s potluck-worthy in no time — which is perfect for all of those summer shindigs. This recipe for Dorito Taco Salad from Spend With Pennies shows how you can use a party-size bag of Doritos, a head of lettuce, ground beef and plenty of toppings to whip up a taco-inspired crowd-pleasing first course.

This video from the Spend With Pennies YouTube channel shows how it’s done:

To make the salad even more fun to enjoy at a casual get-together, you can also make this in the form of Walking Tacos. This is done using the smaller, snack-size bags of Doritos. Start by crushing the chips before opening the bag. Then, once the chips are crushed, open the bag and fill it with the salad ingredients. Simple as that! All you need is a fork to enjoy this taco salad straight from the chip bag. There’s no plate involved, so you can keep the clean-up at a minimum and your guests don’t have to worry about spilling.

You can’t go wrong with any of these taco salad recipes this summer. So, now you know what’s for dinner!